Since When Is There a Simpsons Character Named Nina Skalka?
If you only know me from my work on this site, you might be surprised to learn that I like more than just video games. I like The Simpsons, for example, and until a few years ago, I had not met anyone who knew more about the show than I do. In fact, it’s pretty rare that I encounter a bit of Simpsons lore that’s new to me, and all the more so if it relates to characters on the show, which I collect like other people collect Pokémon. That’s why I was surprised to learn about the existence of Nina Skalka.
I follow the artist David Cooper on social media. He draws Simpsons art, including a long-term project where he’s attempting to draw every single Simpsons character ever. Earlier this month, he posted about a new addition: Nina Skalka. Even if you’re a fan of the show, there’s a good chance you may not know that name. I didn’t. But you probably know the character. She’s a little girl with blond, braided pigtails who is usually in Bart’s class but is sometimes in Lisa’s class.
Though she’s been on the show since the first episode, she hasn’t historically been given much to do. Notably, in “Lisa the Greek,” she incurred an armed response from security guards for possibly stealing socks.
And the end of “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy,” she is the one girl who buys Lisa’s new doll, Lisa Lionheart. (She also gets miscolored earlier in this scene and therefore briefly looks like someone else.)
But she’s never been given a name on the show, and I say this as someone who has seen every episode of The Simpsons.
The name Nina Skalka apparently comes from Virtual Bart, an Acclaim title released for the Super NES and Genesis in 1994. In the intro to either version, you see Bart walking through the Springfield Elementary science fair, whereupon he enters the virtual reality machine that allows the player to try out various mini-games. On the way there, you see Bart pass by other students’ projects, and one of them is the girl with the blond braids, whose science project is an actual space mutant, like in the in-universe horror series that was recurring during the early seasons of the show, as opposed to the different-looking space mutants featured in the first Simpsons video game, 1991’s Bart vs. the Space Mutants. The pigtailed girl is labeled as being Nina Skalka. (The space mutant is labeled as Darren. I don’t know why; this is not a post about space mutants.)
Based on what I could turn up online, the name seems to come from a real-life Nina Skalka who is credited for product licensing work in various video games in the late 90s and early 2000s — everything from E.T. games that I’d never heard of before to something called Muppet Pinball Mayhem. While she’s not credited for Virtual Bart, she does receive a special thanks in the credit for the Batman Forever games released by Acclaim for the arcade and PlayStation in 1996. I did find her online, but she didn’t respond to any of my efforts to ask about the connection and if she knew a Simpsons character has been named after her. I can only guess that friends of hers named the Simpsons character after her as a tip of the hat, possibly because she’d collaborated with them on previous products.
For what it’s worth, the people who actually make the show have not heard of Nina Skalka one way or the other. I asked Rob LaZebnik, who has been writing for The Simpsons since season twelve. He said it’s not something the staff are familiar with: “No one here that I’ve asked really knows her, but we all agree she looks familiar — and a good name!”
I think this particular situation highlights a weird problem with wikis, where fans of a given property might have good intentions but in an effort to be comprehensive, they end up conflating canonical information with stuff that should not make the cut. In this case, the pigtailed girl only has a name in this one game. It’s not something The Simpsons TV show recognizes, but its presence on the Simpson wiki — either of them, actually, with one offering more reliable info than the other — makes it seem like it is official, which makes it easy for people writing about the show to repeat this bad information in, say, an article. If said article exists in a reputable publication, it can end up being used as cited proof that the unofficial, unverified thing actually is true. It’s an online ouroboros of misinformation. (If you want another example of the online ouroboros of bad information, check out my piece on Pac-Man’s name, where I try my damnedest to debunk the idea that he has any connection to hockey pucks.)
To be fair, I love wikis. I use them a lot in my work, but as a jumping off point for further research. Though I double check stuff and always click through to see if a cited source actually says what it’s implied to say, it’s entirely likely that I myself have recirculated false or misleading information. It’s really easy to do, even if you’re careful. (If you remember a time when I have done this, BTW, let me know and I’ll fix it.) But I just wanted to focus attention on the fact that this is a small, ultimately unimportant version of a larger problem of accuracy and media literacy.
To conclude, no, there is not actually a character on The Simpsons named Nina Skalka. It’s just a fleeting reference in a video game that has largely been forgotten. Really, this name may be one of the only reasons Virtual Bart is remembered at all, all these years later. That said, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is actually the character’s name. If Sherri and Terri, the purple-haired twins in Bart’s class, have the last name Mackleberry — and that became canon in the season 25 episode “Yellow Subterfuge” — then I guess it doesn’t seem so wild that this other little girl could be named Nina Skakla.
Of course, all it would take to make this name go from unofficial to canonical would be for someone who works for the show to see the Simpsons wiki entry, mistake it for being correct and drop it into the show… at which point some fan might search online to find out how long this background character has had a full name and, hopefully, end up here.
I sure hope all the info I’ve collected here is correct.
Miscellaneous Notes
Two other otherwise unnamed characters also get names in this sequence: Sophie Jensen, who is a different pigtailed girl in Bart’s class, and Jermaine Jones, who seems to be an original character created for Virtual Bart. He looks like the generic background characters who appeared in the earliest season of The Simpsons. I don’t know where either of these names come from. Considering how many Simpsons characters have names and fleshed-out personalities, it’s a weird choice on the part of the developers to showcase lesser-known ones in the opening animation. But if the blond girl got Nina’s name as a thank-you to the real-life counterpart, maybe these kids also have real-life namesakes who know someone who worked on the game.
Considering that the Simpsons is airing its 35th season, its wild to think how many characters on the show don’t have names but have probably appeared in more episodes of TV than many more famous characters from shows that weren’t so long-lived. Take for example another of Bart’s classmates: the girl with the green glasses. She’s never uttered a word, but she’s appeared in more than a hundred episodes. I’m sure she is the subject of much fanfiction but, like, from three different people and no one else.
If you want to see David Brooks’ art of Nina Skalka, you have to give money to his Patreon. I suggest you do. We should toss money to the artists who make stuff we like.
Should Nina’s name end up on The Simpsons, it would be an example of canon immigration. Online friend Chad Walters kept a blog called Jor-Ellis Island that’s all about canon immigrants in Marvel and DC comics, and it’s really interesting to hear what characters and concepts began external to the comics before eventually ended up in them, like Harley Quinn but a lot more obscure stuff too.
In case you didn’t know, I do a podcast called Gayest Episode Ever that’s all about LGBTQ episodes of classic sitcoms. We just recently covered another Simpsons episode, in case you’re interested, but I should probably point out that the people who made me realize that I did not know more about The Simpsons than anyone else were the hosts of another podcast, Talking Simpsons. Bob Mackey (no relation) and Henry Gilbert (FWIW, also no relation) know more about the show than I do, and I have made peace with that. But to complete this little circle, there’s a really good episode of Talking Simpsons where they’re joined by Chris Kohler to discuss the Simpsons arcade game, the one good Simpsons video game. They also guested on Get Played discussing Bart vs. the Space Mutants.
Rob LaZebnik, meanwhile, was on my podcast back in 2021 to discuss “Portrait of a Lackey on Fire,” the Smithers-centric episode he wrote with his son, who is gay. It’s one of my favorite things we’ve done on Gayest Episode Ever. Do go check it out.
Finally, this research into the Simpsons character who may or may not be named Nina has reminded me that there’s another bit player who somehow earned a name that’s never spoken in the actual series: Tanya, who debuts in “Bart the Genius” and who shows up in one of the spinoff activity books as if we’re supposed to know who she is. I don’t think her name is ever spoken on the show, and I have no idea how the people who put together this book decided that her name should be Tanya.
It’s not a competition, but Nina is doing a better job of persisting in the Simpsons-verse than Tanya ever did.
